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State Looking at Prison Savings
A group of Illinois House committees are discussing ways to save money within Illinois' prison system.

Malcolm Young, director of the Program for Prison Reentry Strategies at Northwestern University School of Law, warns that Illinois is on a path for increased corrections spending. He says there are ways to save the Illinois Department of Corrections money while reducing recidivism.

One suggestion includes expanding early release. According to a report put out last month, early release programs used in Kansas, Michigan, New Jersey and New York reduced prison populations by 5 to 20 percent since 1999 without an increase in crime.

According to The Sentencing Project and Justice Strategies, 19 other state have begun reforming prison systems and broadening qualifications for early release in hopes that incarceration numbers decline in the future.

The Illinois Department of Corrections and Gov. Pat Quinn received criticism over an accelerated early release program that began in late 2009. Quinn later suspended the MGT Push program and it was outlawed in mid-January.

(Illinois Radio Network)
05 03 10 by Newsroom
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